KING OF GRAND JONES STREET
(Part II)
By Nelson Gary
The
painter Jean-Michel Basquiat’s place in art history, by the standards
of current art criticism, is ecliptic: a point where strong and
extreme opposites converge and generate a radiance or darkness.
This eclipse can be viewed as supernatural, freakish, horrifying,
innocent, ugly, and/or beautiful, but it isn’t unnoticed because
of its centrality to time and place and, in this case by metaphor
person.
hus, in the aftermath,
an idol in the twilight casts a silhouette, neither of the sun
nor the moon. What is it? A shadowor, a penumbra?
Both? Neither?
This forces a paradigm shift in the "aesthetic continuum" (Dahlberg)
that causes critical revolution in light of an artistic one. Once
the historical moment of the corona or crown (one of Basquiat’s
symbols) has passed, the cosmology of art with its signifiers,
signs, symbols (the artists and their work) is seen anew.
Sometimes, such as was the case with Basquiat and some of his
contemporaries, most notably Keith Haring, that band of perception
increases significantly enough to expand the entire "aesthetic
continuum." Basquiat was a key figure in turning the eye of the
blue chip art world, critics, gallery owners, buyers and museum
curators, and opening it up to the validity of graffiti art and,
even to some extent, cartooning. When Basquiat burst on the scene,
it was during the 1980s art boom.
If American art scene in the ‘80s was a subway train, then Basquiat tagged practically every car while it became a monorail. While selling postcards
and T-shirts in Soho, he was also making graffiti in the art district,
combining pictures and words and leaving his trademark, a crown
and the word, SAMO (Same Old Shit or Samson, the blind judge of
Israel).
To be doing...»»
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